Tighe & Bond Honored for Its Role in Developing Computing Center

WESTFIELD — During its 21st awards celebration in Boston last month, the Environmental Business Council of New England (EBC) presented Tighe & Bond with an award for its role in developing the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC). The EBC named this state-of-the-art data center, which sits on a former industrial site in Holyoke, the James D.P. Farrell Brownfields Project of the Year. Tighe & Bond was one of several key project contributors to receive this award. Three years in the making and completed in November 2012, the $165 million MGHPCC transformed a historic Holyoke canal mill complex into a gleaming Massachusetts success. It also heralded in a new age of revitalization for this former paper-mill city. The purpose of this project was to prepare an abandoned industrial property for redevelopment into an energy-efficient, 90,300-square-foot data center to support the growing computing needs of five of the most research-intensive universities in Massachusetts. This includes MIT, UMass, Northeastern University, Harvard University, and Boston University; together they are known as the MGHPCC consortium. Tighe & Bond’s contributions to this project, which achieved LEED Platinum certification in 2013, included demolition engineering, permitting, and remediation services to clean up the former 8.5-acre Mastex Industries site prior to the MGHPCC’s construction. Specifically, this encompassed coordination of project funding, hazardous-building-materials surveys, building demolition design and coordination, creative building-debris reuse, environmental permitting activities, assessment and remediation of contaminated soils and groundwater, urban fill-soil management, and multi-disciplinary engineering services. Other key contributors to this project’s success include the MGHPCC Consortium, the Massachusetts Governor’s Office, the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, MassDevelopment, Holyoke Gas & Electric Department, the city of Holyoke, the MIT Department of Facilities, Cisco Systems, EMC Corp., the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, Leggat McCall Properties, McCarter & English, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Turner Construction, and Haley & Aldrich.